Using VMware vROPs to monitor Oracle Database and WebLogic – Management Pack for Oracle EM, Hyperic Plugins, or Both?

This blog post provides a suggested methodology for helping users of VMware vROps/vCOps decide which of the existing solutions, the vROps Management Pack for Oracle EM and the VMware vROps Hyperic Plugins for Oracle, should be used to monitor their Oracle workloads.

It’s been a nearly a year since VMware transferred the vCOps Adapter for Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) to Blue Medora and since that transfer Blue Medora has released a number of major updates as well as rebranded it the Blue Medora vROps Management Pack for Oracle EM. Over that same period of time VMware has continued to evolve their Oracle-focused (Oracle Database and WebLogic J2EE) Hyperic agent-based plugins culminating most recently with a October 2014 update to the Oracle Database plugin that provides support for Oracle Database 12c.

Depending on the circumstances / scenario, either the MP for Oracle EM or the Hyperic Plugins for Oracle technologies can be used to provide vCOps/vROps-based visibility into Oracle workloads.  VMware states the following (PDF Reference Page 52) -> “Hyperic Oracle metrics can be used for basic administration but for detailed analysis the OEM adapter is required”.

In the remainder of this blog post I am going to briefly outline when each should be used as well as scenarios where both should be considered.

The decision largely hinges on (A) whether Oracle Enterprise Manager is already deployed in the environments and (B) how much data beyond just core Database or J2EE server metrics you are interested in having available in vROps for things like clustering/high-availability, database listeners, and the actual J2EE applications themselves.

When to use the vROps Management Pack for Oracle Enterprise Manger (OEM)

• The primary reason why the MP for Oracle EM should be leveraged is that Oracle Enterprise Manager is already in place in your environment and Oracle Management Agents (OMAs) as well as corresponding Oracle Database, Middleware, and Application OEM plugins have been deployed to provide visibility into those workloads. If your Oracle EM is not deployed in your environment and there are no plans to deploy it in the near future, the Management Pack will not provide any value.
• Simplified configuration – the management pack requires that a single data connection (JDBC credentials to the Oracle EM Management Repository) be configured between vROps to OEM
• Relationship mapping between the Oracle components themselves as well as the Oracle components to the VMware layer
• Management Pack provides visibility into Oracle RAC cluster availability and performance
• Management Pack provides visibility into Oracle DB12c Pluggable databases (CDBs, PDBs)
• Management Pack includes 8 Out-of-the-box dashboards that provide high level overviews of Oracle DB infrastructure and Oracle WebLogic J2EE infrastructure
• Management Pack includes automatic vROps tagging of RAC Clusters running on VMware
• Management Pack provides visibility into all of the components of a typical Oracle Databases environments including listeners, RAC Clusters, Oracle Hosts (operating systems), etc
• Management Pack provides visibility into all of the WebLogic components of a typical J2EE server itself, the J2EE applications running on the server, as well WebLogic clusters info
• Management Pack provides visibility into all other Oracle workloads including Oracle Apps (EBS, PeopleSoft, Siebel, JDE, Fusion) as well as Oracle hardware (Exadata, storage, Oracle VM, Oracle x86 and SPARC servers). Support for over 180+ OEM target types

When to use the Hyperic Plugins for Oracle DB and Oracle WebLogic

• #1 reason to use the Hyperic plugins to monitor Oracle Database or Weblogic is that Oracle Enterprise Manager is not leveraged within your environment to monitor Oracle Database or WebLogic in the enterprise and/or is not fully deployed for various reasons (typically licensing)
• The other reason why the Hyperic plugin based approach can make sense for monitoring Oracle Database and WebLogic J2EE is that you are also interested in local monitoring of other Apps / Services that may be running on the Oracle Database / WebLogic server that additional Hyperic plugins exists for. In other words, you plan to deploy a Hyperic Agent onto the server for whatever reason (eg: Operating System monitoring) and it makes sense to take advantage of the Hyperic plugins to provide the additional monitoring provided for Oracle Database and WebLogic

When to use both the vROps Management Pack for Oracle EM and the Hyperic Plugins for Oracle DB and Oracle WebLogic